


We Meet Where Nobody Knows

by themorninglark



Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Asynchronous, M/M, Magic Realism, Time Shenanigans, Time Skips, Trains and Planes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-09
Updated: 2015-10-09
Packaged: 2018-04-25 12:27:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4960642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/themorninglark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I guess because I'll probably never see you again. What are the odds?"</p><p>The thing about being fourteen, on that awkward brink between childhood and the place where all his tomorrows start, is that Makoto sees what Rin doesn't; he sees the lie in his words, and he sees that underneath the anger, the desperate hope of the child within lives on.</p><p>(or, five times Makoto and Rin's timelines overlap, and one time they don't.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Meet Where Nobody Knows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lisettedelapin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisettedelapin/gifts).



> This is for Alma, the loveliest mango. Happy birthday! ♥
> 
> I've always been fascinated by a lot of the things that this fic explores. Time and asynchronicity, but also the romance of travel, the liminality of it, crossing boundaries, trains and planes and such being places where time isn't quite real - where the fabric of time is, shall we say, somewhat porous...
> 
> Well, put it all together and this is what came out. I hope you like it.

**/**

 

The boy has red hair and a face like autumn's last leaf.

He is about to fall, and Tachibana Makoto, aged thirty-two, remembers this face. He has seen it trembling, gazing down into a cup of coffee and the heart of a sunflower; he has seen it in resting in the crook of his elbow, and he thinks, _ah_ , with a tiny sigh that no one else can hear.

_I've found you at last._

The breath slips from his lips like a prayer.

_Rin._

It floats in the air, suspended, that one small syllable; fleeting and ephemeral and seared across his tip of his tongue, fading into the stillness of their train carriage like the setting sun.

Makoto holds back to watch for a moment. He takes in the sight of those pale hands, those shaky palms as the boy presses his forehead to the glass, gazing out at the water far below them. It's just this stretch, Makoto knows, where the train goes over the bridge, and if he's being entirely honest with himself he's never stopped being just a little scared of it - of the emptiness, of the long, dark drop into the water should the train fall, should the bridge fail -

In this moment, though, it is not his heart that needs mending.

"Hi," says Makoto, as he walks up next to Rin.

Rin turns to look at him. His eyes are red-rimmed.

"Who are you?" he asks.

The ghost of a smile crosses Makoto's face. "No one special. I'm just here for the view, like you."

Rin curls one palm, unconsciously, into a fist; jammed against the window, Makoto thinks the glass might break.

"I hate the view. I hate the water," he mutters, and the fracture lines of his voice run raw and cracked.

"Me too," Makoto admits. "I'm scared of the water."

Rin stares. "Huh?"

"I lost someone very dear to me, years ago. He drowned in the sea. Ever since then, I've thought that there was a monster in the water…"

"I - "

Makoto looks down at the interruption. Rin's gazing out of the window through strong, tearless eyes, eyes that have wept themselves dry, and his words start to tumble out as they come undammed, undone; his fists tighten, and his glare on the gentle waves below is like a challenge. _Come at me._

"The water took my dad," says Rin.

When Makoto answers, his voice is quiet.

"And yet, here we are. Looking at the water."

_We can be stronger than this, Rin._

_You will be._

Swallowing, he adds, "There are still dreams we need to chase, right? For those we love."

As the train reaches the end of the bridge, Makoto resists the urge to lay a gentle hand on Rin's shoulder, to tell him it'll be okay. There'll come a time in the future, he knows, when Rin will figure that out for himself, and perhaps they'll never meet again, but -

Here and now, it's enough for him to see that smile on Rin's face one more time.

"You say strange things," Rin tells him, with all the ignorance of his youth, and the blunt edge to his words that Makoto knows so well.

Makoto laughs.

"I guess I do," he says.

 

 

 

The scarf around his neck is warm, but his mother's hands are warmer.

"Be careful, Makoto," she cautions, with words that fall about his ears like gentle rain; and Makoto hears the sound of the wind stirring in the distance, smells the late bloom of sakura on the air. The midday sun is high in the sky.

"I'll be okay," he says. And he will. Haru is by his side and they are going to the seaside, and as long as their hands are tight in each other's, what harm could come to him?

His mother smiles back. Her eyes crinkle as she ruffles his hair and stands up. "You never know who you might meet on the train."

Haru looks up through his unblinking blue eyes, and says, solemnly, "I'm not afraid."

Makoto is, a little bit. But he won't show it. He is a big brother now, and he has to be strong. 

The train looks just like it does in the photographs - old, maybe even more faded than the sepia that Makoto's seen, with railings of copper and brass and a wooden frame that rattles and then quiets as it glides to a stop, and as Haru tugs him forward through the doorway - in the moment they cross the threshold -

Makoto feels the way he does when he plunges into water. Like he's diving. The air is thin. It is hard to breathe. It is just as they say, the sensation of time coming to a standstill.

 _This is travelling._ To hang your own time up on a clothes peg with your jacket, along with everyone else's. To wait, suspended; to never know where and _when_ exactly you are because there _is_ no when, when you're in the in-betweens…

When he turns back, the platform is gone, lost behind a white mist.

Haru lets go of his hand.

Something pricks Makoto's skin, and it's the lightest, gauziest touch. Burning like ice, wrapping itself round Makoto as it sinks deep into the centre of his chest -

" _You._ "

Makoto turns, and sets eyes on Matsuoka Rin for the first time in his life.

"Hi… do I know you?"

"Not yet," says the red-haired boy. He is older, with a smile that could rival the sun's. "I'm Rin. Where are you going?"

And Makoto smiles back, because Rin is warm and envelopes him like the summer breeze, because he must be Makoto's friend from another time if he knows him, surely.

"To the sea. I'm going to visit the old fisherman. He's so kind! He gave me some goldfish last year, and he's going to take me out on his boat, and Haru and I will swim - "

"Makoto. Let's go."

Haru's hand finds his again, and pulls him towards their seats. Makoto turns away.

He's a split second too late to see Rin's face fall with sudden foreboding, so what he remembers later, in his darkest hour, is that smile, and the scent of sakura.

 

 

 

Years later, it occurs to Makoto that no one ever told Rin the rules of engagement.

"The first thing is - "

"Don't fuck up your timeline. I know, I _know_ ," Rin grumbles.

"I wasn't really going to put it like that," says Makoto, with a sheepish grin.

"You were totally _thinking_ it."

This much is true.

The flight from Tokyo to Sydney is about ten hours, and a lot of it is over the ocean. Makoto always books the centre seat, for various reasons. Because he doesn't like looking out of the window at the water. Because he feels safer when he's sandwiched between two people. Because, if there are _two_ people beside him instead of just one, the chances are higher that one of them, one day, will be Rin.

Today is that day.

_Nine hours, two minutes left._

Makoto counts the seconds, watches the tiny plane inch across the flight path on his screen, and looks at the young man that Rin grew up to be. He doesn't look all that different from teenage Rin, but he carries himself differently, like the years have taught him to hold himself in check. He is all muscle and lean lines that you could trace with a fingertip, in the space of a reverent breath; his hair's darkened to a burgundy red that makes Makoto think of summer wine, and his cheekbones are sharper, like his gaze.

He still swims, he tells Makoto proudly. He's been to the Olympics once. Didn't medal, but maybe next year.

Makoto tells Rin about his coaching. The kids who are learning butterfly now. About Haru, who still swims in his spare time. They have a lot to catch up on.

They are the same age, Makoto and Rin, in this time; both twenty-six going on _real adult when did that happen and what the fuck am I doing_ , and Makoto rejoices in his heart of hearts because the chances of that happening are a million to one, but then again -

"It's just, it was a million to one chance," says Rin.

Makoto starts at the echo of his own words.

"That time on the train. That I'd see you again, so soon. I couldn't help it. I was so shocked, y'know? I'd just - "

But Makoto shakes his head warningly, and Rin bites down on his bottom lip with his sharp teeth, spearing his words on their points as he swallows.

"Sorry. No spoilers for you, I promise. But it's hard not to think about it."

"I've read that it's unlikely for two people to meet twice on their travels," says Makoto lightly. "Then to meet three times - or four - or however many it is by now - it must be…"

They fly low, through a patch of cloudy sky, and Rin falls silent. Outside, the fog lies heavy, grey as blankets; Rin's eyes, always so bright, shine through a half-lidded glance in Makoto's direction, like he can't quite believe he's actually there.

Makoto doesn't add that he's been buying plane tickets every summer for the past four years. It's all he can afford on his coaching salary - that leap of faith, once a year -

"It must be fate, huh?" Rin finishes the sentence, and pinpricks of light dance in the back of Makoto's mind; like fireflies, Rin's words light up his dark, he is the glow in his fairytale forest, that elusive will o' the wisp that leads him ever onwards, to a future _just_ beyond his grasp.

"How romantic," Makoto teases.

Rin rolls his eyes at him, and reaches for his hand.

Makoto takes it.

Their fingers form a little cage, lacing together, trapping time in between their palms.

"Hey, Makoto," says Rin. "There's a place, you know. Where all time begins. Where all time meets."

Makoto knows that place. He's been thinking about it too.

He's only afraid that he'll go there, and he'll see the rest of the world, but not Rin.

 

 

 

It's the sound of sniffling that catches Makoto's attention from across the aisle at first.

It is only the second time he has been on a plane, and it's all new to the twins. He is fourteen years old and Ran and Ren are six, and he has his hands full helping his mom and dad settle them down and fasten their seatbelts; they are flying to Tokyo from Iwatobi and it will be a wonderful family holiday, truly, but they have to get _there_ first and it's so far away - only an hour an a half - _only_ an eternity for a six-year-old, and _two_ eternities, for two of them.

Ran is clinging on to his arm, restlessly twitching as she naps on his shoulder; with difficulty, Makoto turns his head just enough not to wake her.

He gasps, and his mouth falls open.

"Rin?" he whispers.

The red-haired boy with his hands around an empty cup looks over. He blinks.

They stare at each other in silence for a moment.

Rin. It _is_ Rin. He is older, here and now. He is probably older than Makoto by a few years. The stubborn set to his jaw hasn't changed, but his face is thinner, his hair longer, tied back in a ponytail. There's a sports bag at his feet and a jacket round his slender shoulders.

"Makoto."

Rin says his name like a spell that he's afraid to break.

"You're crying," says Makoto.

"It's nothing," Rin mutters.

"Why are you crying?"

Rin looks away. He raises one hand to his eyes, wipes them roughly with the back of his palm. A steward passes through their aisle then, pushing a drinks cart; Rin gets a Diet Coke this time, and Makoto gets apple juice, which he balances precariously in his cup holder with Ran stirring on his arm.

Rin drinks deeply from his can of cola. Makoto waits. The steward walks on.

When Rin sets his can down and looks up to meet Makoto's unyielding gaze, he sighs; the sound is an echo, a memory - of the past, of the future, perhaps, in this space where time is less a one-way current and more of a swirling whirlpool - his voice is deeper now, Rin's voice, and it sticks with Makoto like it's vibrating in his very bones.

"Because I'm a fucking failure, okay? Shit, I - "

It's not like Makoto's never heard swearwords before. There's something oddly grounding about the way they fall from Rin's lips, actually. Like they're a promise that he's real. He's a person on the tides of time, just like him, not a figment that Makoto made up in his wildest imaginings.

"My dream's never going to come true. I can't face Sousuke and everyone back here. But I can't face everyone back in Sydney either. I don't know _why_ the fuck I'm going where I'm going. And I don't know why I'm telling you this."

Rin stops abruptly. He looks at Makoto, the tear on his cheek glistening.

"I guess because I'll probably never see you again. What are the _odds_?"

The thing about being fourteen, on that awkward brink between childhood and the place where all his tomorrows start, is that Makoto sees what Rin doesn't; he sees the lie in his words, and he sees that underneath the anger, the desperate hope of the child within lives on.

"Don't cry," is all Makoto says. "Here."

He reaches down to the paper bag below his seat. There's a gift there for his aunt in Tokyo. He plucked it himself with these hands of his, arranged the bouquet, in his clumsy way. He figures, she won't miss one.

"I grew these in my garden," says Makoto proudly, as he holds the sunflower out to Rin.

And yellow spills between them like a river of gold, like sunrise on the horizon as Rin reaches out, hesitantly at first, with fingers that brush Makoto's own as they wrap round the sturdy green stem; Makoto is old enough now to understand the stirrings of his own heart, and young enough to trust in it with everything he has.

 

 

 

"I think I would love you even if I never saw you again."

Rin sputters, and chokes on his takeaway Starbucks.

Makoto, smiling serenely, leans back in his seat and allows himself the luxury of enjoying the view. He only gets to see it once every few years after all, if he's lucky.

"About that - " Rin starts, but Makoto shushes him with a swift finger to his lips. It comes away coffee-stained, and he licks it without thinking. It's not sweet enough for his taste.

The tips of Rin's ears redden. He takes another hasty sip from his cup.

Makoto knows that he _will_ see Rin again. He's known since their first meeting. But the where, the how, and the ever slippery _when_ \- well, that's the question -

"Why do you say something like that, anyway?" asks Rin.

There isn't a hint of doubt in his voice. He is nineteen, after all, and Makoto is twenty-one, and this is not the age of doubt but the age of falling forward, falling headlong into life and love and heartbreak, in search of their blazing triumph at the end of the road.

Outside, snowdrifts paint the barren landscape in china white. The quiet is deafening, delicate. Unreal. They are a photograph frozen in the moment that is _now_ , and their train has slowed to a crawl.

That's okay with Makoto, at least this once.

"Because I don't know if I'll get to say it to you next time."

It's the truth. Every moment with Rin feels stolen, from the sands of some cosmic hourglass. Every time they meet, it's another practical impossibility. The chances of their timelines crossing so often are next to zero. It shouldn't happen again. It will. But Makoto never knows if the next time will be the last.

"You're unbelievable," says Rin.

"Huh?"

"I thought about you, you know."

Rin's fingers curl around his paper cup for warmth, and when he turns to look at Makoto, his face is flushed, pink around his cheekbones.

"In the last three years. I thought about the boy who told me not to cry. I wondered if _he_ cried, back then."

"When the fisherman died?" Makoto asks quietly.

"Yeah," says Rin. "I thought that you probably didn't. I thought that made you strong. But now, seeing you again, I think… I think that you did. And I think that makes you stronger. And that's amazing. You're amazing. I don't know why, Makoto, I always come back to you - "

Rin's shoulders start to shake, and he takes a deep, shuddering breath; he doesn't have to say _I love you_ , not in so many words - because he's saying it with every gesture, every glance, every part of himself that he's trying to hold back, that's spilling out even so.

"I'm not that amazing," says Makoto.

Rin smiles.

"Yeah. You're just a kid who's as screwed up as I am, right?"

"Yeah," says Makoto, and leans in.

Rin's lips are scorching in the winter chill, and Rin himself is a flame, life-giving.

 

 

**/**

 

 

Ten years after Rin tells him about the place where time begins, Makoto finally finds the courage to make the trip there.

The Prime Meridian stands in the centre of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, and the heartbeat of the universe thrums beneath his feet. If the veil of time is thin in the spaces in between, on trains and planes, it is thinner still, here, at this spot; but it is Makoto who feels like the ghost passing through, like he doesn't belong here. Perhaps no one really does.

One foot in the future, one foot in the past, Makoto straddles the line that cuts the world in half.

He closes his eyes. Opens them.

Nothing's happened.

He's still here. The view of Greenwich that sprawls before him is the same as before, trees and concrete buildings and the foggy London sky in the distance. He's facing a stainless steel sculpture that shimmers as the seconds and milliseconds ripple round its surface, that flashes with the reflections of those who pass by - here - miles away -

on the other side of the earth -

_There!_

For a moment -

Makoto sees that telltale red hair whip across the curve of the steel. Right at the top. Where the point of the sculpture marks the direction of the North Star.

He looks down.

There's a square of folded paper at his feet, where there wasn't one before, and it has his name on it. _To Makoto._

He picks it up with hands that are strangely steady. He should be nervous, maybe, he thinks, but more than that, he is excited to learn something new about Rin; it makes him smile to see that Rin is the sort of person who presses neat folds in his paper and that he has spindly handwriting. He would probably make beautiful origami.

As he opens up the square, a single dried petal falls from between the folds.

Yellow.  _Sunflower_.

 

_Makoto,_

_If you're reading this, it means we've missed each other. Well, fuck that.  
_ _We're going to meet one day, in a place that's real, in a time that's real, that doesn't have to end._

 _I don't care if you're eighty years old and I'm like, forty when that happens, okay?  
_ _I'm not giving up on you. So let's keep trying._

_Rin._

 

Makoto, unlike Rin, hasn't come prepared. All he has is his tourist's brochure of the Royal Observatory, and a half-chewed pen in his back pocket. He reaches for it, and scrawls a short note on a blank spot on the back of the map.

It's the best he can do. There isn't space for more.

 

_Rin,_

_It's a promise._

_Makoto._

 

He leaves it at the foot of the sculpture, and as he walks away, he counts his paces, a reluctant Orpheus.  _One. Two. Three._

On twenty, he turns and looks back. 

Rin isn't there. But the brochure is gone.

Makoto smiles.

_One day, Rin -_

_One day._

 

  **/**

 

**Author's Note:**

> [Here is a picture](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Steel_sculpture_on_the_Prime_Meridian%2C_Greenwich_-_geograph.org.uk_-_771282.jpg) of the sculpture that stands at the Prime Meridian in Greenwich.


End file.
